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You could argue Owen Coppin doesn’t need any new Beatles stuff. His wife would probably agree.

Nearly every room in his Surrey home contains something about the Fab Four, with the upper floor bursting at the seams with everything Sir Paul McCartney, John Lennon, George Harrison and Ringo Starr ever recorded, wrote or produced.

In a small alcove, Coppin has dozens of boxes filled with every 45 single the band recorded, from pretty much every country they were released in. In another room, shelves are filled to the brim with CDs, from official recordings to concert bootlegs, radio interviews and studio outtakes. Down a spiral staircase, more books, posters and framed art are piled high.

And then there are the vinyl LPs: The original UK pressings, as well as Canadian and American editions, both in mono and stereo, German and Japanese imports. Coppin owns them all, often in duplicate or triplicate, with the ones containing printing or production mistakes considered some of his most prized possessions.

But now that the Fab Four have reissued the critically acclaimed 2009 remastered UK albums on classic vinyl format — the only way one can truly enjoy The Beatles, some will argue — Coppin has yet another big box of records to add to his collection.

And what a box it is.

ALL TOGETHER NOW

All 12 UK studio albums, from Please Please Me to Let It Be, plus the U.S. LP version of Magical Mystery Tour and the double-volume Past Masters, have been lovingly etched in 180-gram vinyl (audiophile grade), complete with rejuvenated original artwork, labels and liner notes.

“The vinyl are the same mixes as the 2009 CD stereo remasters,” Coppin says. “There’s no question about it. But on the vinyl they’ve brought a lot of the stuff from the background — the voices and some of the instruments — forward, and it’s louder. So there’s definitely a distinctiveness there. The quality on this one is better, it’s a higher range than the CD because it was etched into metal at half-speed — I’m sure it was at half-speed — and it’s a bigger groove than the ones from 20 years ago. So there’s a different feel to it. A lot of people call it warmer, I sort of feel it’s fuller — like you’re there.”

Indeed, sonically, the main difference between the CD and vinyl versions of the 2009 remasters is the bitrate: Instead of compressing down to 16 bit as they did for the CD format, EMI engineer Sean Magee has explained in a number of interviews that the vinyl got the full 24-bit treatment.

For audiophiles who care about such things, the lacquer was cut from a 44.1k/24-bit digital master for each album, with Help! and Rubber Soul being the only two that, as with the 2009 box set, were cut from George Martin’s 1987 remasters (the year the catalogue was first reissued on CD).

Wherever you stand on the analog vs. digital mastering debate, the records are gloriously rich in terms of sound quality, and there is no doubt this is the way the Beatles were meant to be experienced. If you have a turntable, it’s a no-brainer.

The vinyl is available in a collector-worthy box set limited to 50,000 copies worldwide, and each of the LPs is available individually as well.

Extra touches include the cut-outs and coloured inner sleeve for Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band, the lyrics poster and photos that were originally packaged with The Beatles (The White Album), and Beatles For Sale in its original UK gatefold format.

“If you’ve never had vinyl before and you’re interested in it, I would go for this,” Coppin says. “Or if there’s a specific album dear to you, I would buy that. It’s just amazing the things you can hear.”

EVERYTHING IS REAL

Hearing the “1,2,3,4!” count-in on I Saw Her Standing There still yields the same kind of visceral thrill it always has, but getting that kick after you manually place the needle in the groove is just that much more gratifying.

Letting yourself “relax and float downstream” to the sound of Revolver’s game-changing album closer Tomorrow Never Knows is a glorious experience, as is hearing the psychedelic loops on I Am The Walrus and Strawberry Fields Forever, which practically jump out of your speakers.

A Hard Days Night’s opening chord (which is a masterpiece in itself) is flat-out stunning in vinyl form, as is the intricate instrumentation contained in the song. You’ll marvel at McCartney’s bumpy bass on Baby You’re A Rich Man, a song somehow mistakenly credited to Harrison on the Magical Mystery Tour’s Side 2 label.

But it’s in the Beatles less ornate songs that the vinyl really shines: Harrison’s sitar on Norwegian Wood, Lennon’s pained breaths on Girl, and the strings on Eleanor Rigby all come alive under the needle.

“Some of the quieter songs — Julia, Because, the piano parts in A Day In The Life — are so much clearer,” Coppin says. “Some of the earlier ones — Mr. Moonlight, And I Love Her — are brilliant on this.”

The box set comes packaged with a stunning 252-page hardbound book where award-winning British radio producer Ken Howlett details the history and the making of all the Beatles classic albums.

“The book is huge. It’s heavy quality paper. It’s well put together,” Coppin says. “One thing I felt was truly missing with the CDs was that you didn’t have the full-sized artwork, you didn’t have a thing you could hold up and read. Most people (today) get music for music’s sake and they don’t care if they have liners or a package. But most people in their 20s who see this go, ‘Oh my God.’”

THE END?

For hardcore fans, the band’s mono output is the true pot of gold, and Magee has confirmed in various interviews that a vinyl version of the limited edition mono box that was all the rage for collectors in 2009 will likely see the light of day in 2013.

Granted, as Coppin explains, the stereo versions of The Beatles’ first four albums don’t hold a candle to their original mono mix, which is the true way the albums were conceived and envisioned with producer George Martin. Only Let It Be and Abbey Road were genuinely recorded in stereo, and though both of the reissues sound great, fans will likely prefer the original pressings for tone and warmth.

That being said, if you are simply looking to replace your battered old Beatles records (especially Revolver, Sgt. Pepper’s and The White Album) or if you simply want to invest in a “definitive” set, the new reissues are a great option at a price that makes sense (approximately $24 for single records, $32 for The White Album and $35 for Past Masters, and roughly $320 for the box set).

They also obviously make great Christmas gifts, and you can bet EMI had this in mind in releasing the vinyl set.

For someone who will always need more Beatles like Coppin — and whose mom infamously refused to let him see the Beatles when they played Empire Field in Vancouver in ’64 — there are still better treats.

“We lived only a block and a half away, I could hear it and everything, My mom never forgave herself.”

And so when Coppin turned 64, he bought himself McCartney tickets for Sunday as a birthday present.

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